I understand why C. is correct, but isn't it still true that the phrase in D. "for which there is no clear evidence whether these were shared by ichthyosaurs," weakens the argument (although more weakly than C.?).

"No evidence for" does not mean evidence against. However, no evidence for DOES mean less likely to be true, doesn't it?

If I have no evidence something is true, it is less likely to be true compared to if I DID have evidence for that thing. So the fact that there is no evidence for does weaken (albeit weakly). I bring up this point because J.Y. has mentioned multiple times that weaken questions DO NOT ask us to definitively disprove the conclusion. Does "no evidence for" disprove anything? No, it does not. But that is not the standard anyway.

I don't understand what J.Y. means when he says D. "invites us to make an unwarranted assumption." Why doesn't D. weaken even when you DO NOT assume no evidence = evidence against?

#help

Does JY misspeak when explaining why A. is wrong? He says "we know that because we are isolated, it is not likely to elicit a positive response." But I think we don't know that from the stimulus, which simply says isolation reduces the chance of a positive response but makes no claim as to whether it is "likely." Hypothetically, isolation can reduce the chance of a positive response but a positive response can still be "likely," although relatively less so. So the reason A. is wrong is not because I --> L =/= I --> L, but because we can make no claims to the absolute likelihood (likely or unlikely) but only the relative likelihood (reduced or increased chance). #feedback

I was between B. and E. but I could not being myself to choose E. because I thought E. was baiting me to make an assumption. E says, "Azedcorp is financially so weak that bankruptcy will probably soon force the sale of its newspaper holdings."

I was trying to be aware of sets/the size of sets, so I thought E. was baiting me to assume that if Azedcorps were to sell its newspaper holdings due to bankrupcy, it would necessarily sell its The Daily holdings. I was trying to be aware that Azedcorp could have many other newspaper holdings, and the sale of its newspaper holdings =/= the sale of all of its newspaper holdings =/= the sale of The Daily. So I thought E. was trying to bait me into making some unreasonable assumptions, but I guess I overthought and ended up being unreasonable about what is unreasonable?

To make E. work, you have to assume that bankruptcy will force Azedcorp to sell The Daily. To make B. work, you have to assume that Morris paying more will make Azedcorp sell. However, we don't know what other holdings Azedcorp has (and therefore what else it can sell to get out of bankruptcy without selling The Daily) and we also don't know why Azedcorps refuses to sell to Morris (i.e. we don't know if it is because Morris' previous offers were too low).

How do you pick between which of these two assumptions is more reasonable?

#help

For Q19, does "does not conform" in reference to passage B. means the policy in passage B. conflicts with the given situation or that it merely does not advocate for that situation?

Is it true that in Parallel/Analogy Qs, the correct AC will match the strength of the stimulus? For example if the conclusion in the stimulus says "must" like it does here, any answer choice that says "probably" or "likely" can be confidently eliminated on shallow dip because an argument that results in a "must" claim cannot be similar in form to an argument that results in a probabilistic claim?

#help

I'm a bit confused as to how the phrasing of E. is an example of a source attack, which is the flaw in this reasoning. It seems to me like even if E. WAS NOT true, the argument would still have the source attack flaw.

E. says: "overlooks the fact that Sigerson's proposal would apply only to the future conduct of city politicians."

If Sigerson's proposal was retrospective, i.e. it applied to past conduct, wouldn't the argument still be flawed?

I'm imagining a scenario where the stimulus goes something like this: "Sigerson argues that the city should adopt ethical guidelines that retrospectively penalize politicians who accept campaign contributions from companies that do business with the city. Sigerson's proposal is dishonest, however, because he has taken contributions from such companies throughout his career in city politics."

This argument is STILL flawed because the argument is based on Sigerson's personal character/past acts, and does not actually challenge the reasoning of the argument. It is not dishonest for Sigerson to be arguing in favor of his own punishment for his own misdeed; in fact, it is arguably very honest.

The problem in the original argument is not whether Sigerson's proposal would apply to past or future actions, but rather that's Sigerson's actions have no bearing on the proposal regardless. So. E. doesn't seem to actually be addressing the core flaw in the argument. Even if we "fixed" the argument according to E., wouldn't it still be flawed?

#help

I chose D. because I did not think that AC D. explained the stimulus; rather, it seemed to me like the stimulus explained AC D. I think it makes more sense for the causal chain to go from more lamps --> less fire pits. Fire pits were an earlier technology and persisted until they were replaced by something "better," i.e. the lamps. However, it does not make sense to say that there are more lamps in the later period BECAUSE there were less fire pits; its actually that there are less fire pits BECAUSE there are more lamps. So I don't think D. "explains" the stimulus.

Can someone explain how despite this E. is more wrong (i.e. the correct answer) than D.? Did I understand the causal chain incorrectly, or is the direction of causation less important than I think?

#help

I noticed that I tend to kick things up into the domain automatically without even noticing. Are there ever times on MBT questions where selecting the correct answer choice depends on noticing that something has been improperly kicked up to the domain?

I'm wondering if I should try to pay more attention to my automatic processing involving the domain or if that's a waste or time/energy.

Can anyone explain how AC E for Q27 is supported by the passage? I was thrown off by the wording of AC E. when it says "only used for private research," because the passage says "private study or research." I thought this was an example of equivocation where the two concepts are not the same. It seems to be that the way the passage is phrased says researchers get copyright exemptions for "research" which is not the same as "private study."

While I understand why D. is the correct answer choice in this case, I'm struggling on the broader point of how to assess the reasonableness of assumptions.

When assessing Yoko's claim as a MSS question, JY says B. is unsupported or slightly supported at best. This confused me because I think it is reasonable to assume that if the characters are less frightening, the story will be less frightening. I don't think this conclusion is strongly implied, but I do think it is somewhat implied because while there is an assumption it doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Are there any tips or guidelines to assessing an assumption's reasonableness? How do I contend with what feels like a subjective assessment of how "reasonable" an assumption is?

#help

I think I don't really understand the question stem "the argument is advanced by..."

The argument is that objectivity in historical scholarship is important. How is this argument advanced by identifying obstacles to this objectivity? This seems like an additional/related but tangential point that does not make the argument more true (as in, identifying obstacles to objectivity does not make it more true that objectivity is important).

What exactly does it mean for an argument to be advanced by something else? Advanced =/= supported?

#help

I chose A. because I thought we could properly infer from the premise the "additional assumption that the proposal shouldn’t pass," which would allow us to "contrapose on the conditional to arrive at the desired conclusion." (as JY says in the written explanation for A.).

When the stimulus says "any member...ought either to vote against the proposal or abstain," is it not reasonable to infer the activists believes the proposal shouldn't pass?

(I thought this was one of those situations where there's an implied major premise/sub-conclusion that you have to make explicit to make the entire logical chain make sense.)

IF that's true, then the fact that voters would decide in favor would fail the necessary condition and therefore also the sufficient condition ==> /all members abstain = at least one member vote against.

Why is it improper to infer from the stimulus that the proposal shouldn't pass?

It seems like Q26 is asking us to do something that we would be heavily penalized for on other LSAT questions, by equating two related but not the same concepts and being imprecise in our use/understanding of language. In this case, it is equating the level of exclusion with the level of rigidity.

To me, there's a significant gap in meaning between a law being more exclusionary and a law being more rigid. Exclusionary talks about the scope, e.g. X is included, Y and Z are excluded. Rigidity talks about the adherence to the scope, i.e. X. is included 98% of the time, Y and Z are excluded 96% of the time (highly rigid). But they're not the same thing. It is possible to imagine an inclusionary but rigid law. Assuming they are the same thing is a mistake the LSAT sets as trap answer choices all the time.

I don't even WANT to start thinking that exclusion and rigidity are equivalent because I think that mindset is going to mess me up on more questions than it will help me with because it goes against being precise with your words.

Why is the word "always" in AC B. problematic? I thought it was ok for rules to be broader/less narrowly tailored than their specific applications in PSA questions. A broader/stronger rule can be used to yield a weaker result. The problem with PSA answers is when the rule is not strong enough to yield the result you want.

#help

Can someone explain this part of the written explanation for AC B: "While this rule potentially takes us to the right destination, that is, water should be supplied by a government agency which implies that it should not be supplied by a private for-profit company..."

So, "water should be supplied by a government agency" is LOGICALLY EQUIVALENT to "water should not be supplied by a non-government agency"? This makes sense in my head but I don't understand how this maps onto lawgic.

if supplied, then govt agency ==> supplied --> govt agency

if not supplied, then not govt agency ==> /supplied --> /govt agency

These two ARE NOT contrapositives of each other. How can one imply the other, as the explanation says?

Is context usually (or only) in disagreement with the eventual argument the author will make? In both cases described above (but, however, yet and some people say), the author introduced the context and ultimately made an arguement for why it is wrong. If the context agreed with the conclusion, would it be transformed into a premise, as it would be a claim that supported another claim?

What is the difference between a weak argument and a non-argument? At what point is the support in the argument so weak that it becomes non-support and therefore a non-argument?